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I broke down a bought an Apple Watch several months ago. I went for the Sport model with the basic Sport band. That kept the cost down to $400. The “Watch” model was another $200 with no change in functionality. The only difference would be in the materials. A steel case and a sapphire crystal.
This was not my first wearable. I had a Fitbit Force, which was recalled. I was happy with the fitness functionality & the iPhone software package. My opinions on the band are well documented.

So far, I’m more pleased with the Apple Watch. It is much more versatile, and has comparable fitness tracking functions.

As a watch, the Apple Watch is actually usable. The software does a good job of displaying when I raise my arm and rotate the watch upward. This is a vast improvement over the Fitbit, where I had to press a button (flashback to the early digital watches). My one nit is that the Apple Watch software is calibrate for wearing it on the outside of the wrist. I wore my watch on the inside of my wrist for decades, and the Apple Watch wasn’t happy with this. This limitation has me back to wearing my watch on the outside of my wrist.

There are ten watch faces loaded, each configurable. I’ve been switching around on an irregular basis. My preference is for traditional analog watch faces. This includes the Mickey Mouse option. The watch faces are configurable for color and options like day, date, timer, stop watch, fitness rings, and battery life.

In all, I’m happy with it. The fitness function is what I use the most (outside of actually using the watch to tell time). I really like the message and phone preview functions. Being able to review/preview messages and calls and deal with most of them quickly is more of a feature that I thought it would be.

Watch OS 2 is due out next week. I’ll post my impressions after I play around with it a bit.